Declining Crime Rates: Insiders' Views of the New York City Story George L

Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology Volume 88 Article 3 Issue 4 Summer

Summer 1998 Declining Crime Rates: Insiders' Views of the New York City Story George L. Kelling

William J. Bratton

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/jclc Part of the Criminal Law Commons, Criminology Commons, and the Criminology and Criminal Justice Commons

Recommended Citation George L. Kelling, William J. Bratton, Declining Crime Rates: Insiders' Views of the New York City Story, 88 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 1217 (Summer 1998)

This Symposium is brought to you for free and open access by Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology by an authorized editor of Northwestern University School of Law Scholarly Commons. 0091-4169/98/8804-1217 THE JOURNAL OF CRIMINALLAW & CRIMINOLOGY Vol. 88, No. 4 Copyright © 1998 by Northsestern University, School of Law Prine in U..A

DECLINING CRIME RATES: INSIDERS' VIEWS OF THE NEW YORK CITY STORY

GEORGE L. KELLING AND WILLIAM J. BRATTON'"

I. INTRODUCTION Something dramatic happened in New York City in 1994: a lot of people stopped committing crimes, especially violent ones. The reduction in the number of persons committing murders, for example, while not unprecedented,' was extraor- dinary. Since 1994, a debate has raged about why this happened. Putting our position up front, we believe the police played an important, even central, role in getting people to stop committing crime in New York City. Despite arguments to the contrary,' no evidence exists that the substantial drops in crime in New York City, especially the initial ones when one of the authors of this paper, William Bratton, was commissioner, were the result of economic change, changes in drug use patterns, or demographic changes. Arguably, New York City's economy, drug use patterns, and demography might be different now in 1998. Unemployment was at 10% the month Bratton took over the New York City Police Department (NYPD) (January 1994) and at 8.7% when he resigned (April 1996)-hardly a booming economy.' And remember as well, the initial reductions in crime were so steep that by August of 1995-three years ago, but only twenty months after Bratton took office-New York maga-

• Professor, Rutgers University; Research Fellow, Harvard University; Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute. .. President, Carco Group, Inc.; Former Commissioner, New York City Police De- partment. I SeeJeffrey Fagan et al., DecliningHomicidein New York City. a Tale of Two Trends, 88 J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINoLoGY 1277 (1998). ' See generally, Alfred Blumstein & Richard Rosenfeld, Explaining Recent Trends in U.S. Homicide Rates, 88J. CRIM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 1175 (1998). 'NEWYORK CrlYPoLICE DEPARTMENT, NEWYORK CrY CRIME CONTROL INDICATORS & STRATEGYAssESSMENT 41 (1998).

1217 1218 KELLING & BRA TTON [Vol. 88 zine declared in a cover story, "The End of Crime As We Know It."4 Readers should understand that this debate about the origins of crime reductions in the United States, especially in New York City, are not just academic in the sense that detached scholars are searching objectively for some "truth" lurking out there somewhere in the data. In fact, criminological and political ideologies have shaped a good portion of this debate and are barely beneath the surface of even the most "detached" presen- tations. We do not pretend to be free from strong points of view about what happened in New York City. We were there and our presence belies any "detached objectivity." Yet, we are not alone in having important vested interests in the outcome of the debate. Aside from the lack of any competing explanations, our confidence that the police played an important role in New York City has three origins: (1) We had a guiding "idea" about how to prevent crime; put another way, we had a theory of action; (2) We applied this idea in New York City's subway and, without anticipating it, the subway experiences became the "pretest" for what was to happen later citywide; (3) Bratton, most importantly, but Kelling as well, had been struggling with issues of how to improve policing through police leadership, management, and administration for over two decades-principles developed in the context of organizational and policy literature and experience. In the three sections that follow, we will be brief. We have written elsewhere about these issues and will not repeat our arguments here in detail.

II. THE "IDEA"-BROKEN WINDOWS The "broken windows" metaphor had its origin in an Atlan- tic Monthly article by James Q. Wilson and Kelling.5 It argued

'Craig Horowitz, The Suddenly Safer City, NEwYoRtm, Aug. 14, 1995, at 20. 5James Q. Wilson & George L. Kelling, Broken Windows. The Police and Neighborhood Safety, ATLANTIC MONTHLY, Mar. 1982, at 29. 1998] INSIDERS' ViEWS 1219

that, just as a broken window left untended was a sign that nobody cares and leads to more and severe property damage, so disorderly conditions and behaviors left untended send a signal that nobody cares and results in citizen fear of crime, serious crime, and the "downward spiral of urban decay." The article also argued that whenever crime and communities verged on being out of control in the past, residents and authorities in neighborhoods moved to reassert controls over youth and over disorderly behavior. The implications of this point of view are that minor offenses have serious consequences for the life of neighborhoods and communities. Citizens, city officials, and police ignore them at their peril. This point of view is at odds with the reign- ing crime control policy view that had been developing throughout the 1950s and 1960s and made explicit by President Johnson's Crime Control Commission.7 Police, in this view, are "law enforcement officers," the front end of the criminal justice system whose business is serious crime-arresting offenders. For a variety of reasons police got out of the business of minor offenses. These reasons went beyond the utilitarian view that scarce police resources should best be concentrated on "serious" crimes. They included an understanding of how police abused loitering and vagrancy ordinances in the past; a desire for less intrusive policing and a more judicious use of police authority in a democracy; and, a view that many of the offenses, like prostitution, are victimless. Nonetheless, we argued that the links between disorder, fear, and crime went something like the following: Disorder -> Citizen Fear -> Withdrawal (Physical & Social) -- Increased Predatory Behavior -> Increased Crime -> Spiral of Decline"

6 WESLEY SKOGAN, DISORDER AND DECLINE: CRIME AND THE SPIRAL OF URBAN DECAY IN AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOODS 84 (1990). PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON LAW ENFORCEMENT AND THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE, THE CHALLENGE OF CRIME IN A FREE SOCIETY (1967). S S KOGAN, supra note 6 at 7 ;GEORGE L. KELIUNG & CATHERINE M. COLES, FIXING BROKEN WINDOWS: RESTORING ORDER AND REDUCING CRIME IN OUR CoMMUNrIES 20 (1996). 1220 KELUNG & BRA TTON [Vol. 88

According to this model, waiting until serious crimes occur to intervene is too late: dealing with disorderly behavior early, like successful communities have in the past, prevented the cycle from accelerating and perpetuating itself. Moreover, experiences in the subway taught us that many chronic, serious offenders also behave in a disorderly fashion and commit minor offenses like farebeating. Police order maintenance activities also give police the opportunity to make con- tact with and arrest serious offenders for minor offenses. We never claimed that order maintenance alone is the sole means of preventing crime. Solving crimes, incarceration, social change, deterrence by other means, police presence and persuasion, citizen vigilance, reduction of opportunities, envi- ronmental design, and other factors play a role as well. In New York City's subway, however, we argue that order maintenance was an especially significant part of reclaiming the subway and reducing crime.

III. THE SUBWAY In April of 1989, Robert Kiley, Chairman of New York State's Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) asked Kelling to assist the MTA in solving a problem in the New York City Transit Authority's subway (NYCTA). Kiley believed that the subway was in deep trouble-passenger usage of the subway was in rapid decline. New York City's late 1980s economic slump partially explained this decline. But marketing surveys suggested a more complicated problem: "homelessness" was frightening passengers and causing them to abandon the subway in droves. This was after $8 billion dollars had been poured into the subway to upgrade trains and tracks during the early and mid-1980s. The NYCTA had already largely solved the problem of subway graffiti-a problem considered so intractable that its eradication was considered by some to be one of the most successful

' SeeWilson & Kelling, supra note 5, at 33. 1998] SINSIDERS' VIEWS 1221 urban policy "wins" on record.0 Yet, despite this achievement, the frightening and intimidating behavior of a large group of miscreants overmatched whatever advantages accrued from graffiti elimination. For those who have not experienced New York's subway during the late 1980s, its nightmarish circumstances are hard to describe. "In your face" panhandlers confronted riders throughout the system, from station entrances to trains. A quar- ter of a million passengers a day were "farebeaters," going over, under, and around turnstiles. Youths deliberately blocked turnstiles, held open emergency gates, and extorted fares from passengers. Platforms, trains, and passageways reeked from public urination and defecation. Young men stalked tollbooths plan- ning to rob them if by any chance their doors were opened. These same tollbooths-literally under siege-had already been firmly secured, including being equipped with special automatic fire extinguishers that would be activated if youths poured gaso- line into the money window and lit it to force toll-takers to open booth doors. Drug and alcohol abusers and the emotionally disturbed, often one and the same, sprawled throughout the entire system-at times taking over entire cars on a train. Robber- ies of passengers were increasing. For the Transit Police Department (TPD), at this time an independent police department of some 4,000 officers, it was business as usual. They shared the common view held by every- one from homeless advocates, to the New York City Civil Liber- ties Union, to the New York Times." The problem was "homelessness" and homelessness was not the TPD's problem. Robberies consumed its attention. For example, the TPD was eager to restart an earlier discredited decoy unit. When confronted by Kiley about the subway's "homelessness" problems, TPD's administration at first balked. Later, under pressure, it proposed massive cleaning crews armed with high-powered

" Nathan Glazer, On Subway Graffiti in New York, PUBLIC INTEREST, Winter 1978, at 3-11; Maryalice Sloan-Howitt & George L. Kelling, Subway Graffiti in New York City. 'Get- tin' Up' vs. 'Meanin' It and Cleanin' It, 1 SECURrrYJ. 131 (1990). " KirkJohnson, Officials Debate How to Get Homeless out of Subways, N.Y. TIMES, Sept. 5, 1988, § 1, at 23. 1222 KELLING & BRA TTON [Vol. 88 hoses supported by a special police unit that would eject the "homeless" as they "interfered" with or got in the way of cleaning. The story of reclaiming the subway by the police has been told elsewhere and need not be repeated here. 2 Summarizing, a large scale problem-solving exercise was conducted, the problem in the subway was properly understood as illegal disorderly behavior, policies were developed and officers trained to deal with disorder. The legal battles over police activities to rein in panhandling were fought and ultimately won; TPD leadership, however, was recalcitrant and the effort flagged. Bratton was recruited as Chief of the TPD in April of 1990; he provided leadership and implemented a large-scale effort to restore order. Following these actions, serious crime began an immediate and steep decline. Disorder and crime are no longer serious problems in New York's subwaym-it is among the safest in the world. It feels, smells, and "tastes" different. Indeed, the culture was so different that by the mid-1990s the Transit Authority initiated a civil- ity campaign, encouraging citizens to queue before boarding trains-a campaign that would have been a joke in the late 1980s. Returning ex-NewYorkers are stunned by the changes. We highlight the subway experience because it has been lost in the bigger New York City disorder and crime story, especially since the TPD was absorbed by the New York City Police De- partment (NYPD) in 1995. Yet, it is an important story. It is probably one of the largest problem-solving exercises on record. The police tactics, organizational change, and administrative processes implemented in the TPD foreshadowed changes in the New York City Police Department. Still and all, the reclama- tion of the subway stands as a major event in public policy-certainly on a par with graffiti eradication-that raised and managed complex policy, constitutional, legal, and moral issues. From our point of view and within the context of this dis- cussion, it is especially important because it is hard to attribute

2 See generally WILLAM J. BRATTON, TURNAROUND: How AMERIcA'S TOP COP REVERSED THE CRIME EPIDEMIC (1998); KELLING & COI.S, supra note 8, at 108-56. 1998] INSIDERS' VIEWS 1223 the changes in the subway to anything other than police action. To be sure, the NYCTA implemented major efforts to deal with the genuinely homeless who were attempting to use the subway as a surrogate shelter. Graffiti had been eliminated and trains and tracks upgraded. Attempts had been made to target-harden the tollbooths and token-boxes (youths had been able to "spring" their doors with large screwdrivers and steal hundreds of tokens at a time), and some areas had been blocked off to the public. Moreover, subway officials were implementing a "station manager" program that focused on restoring a sense of station "ownership" and concern for passengers. But the subway environment was spinning out of control despite subway improve- ments and attempts at target hardening. Moreover, post-hoc explanations used to explain the later citywide reductions in crime-changes in drug use patterns, improved economy, de- clines in the number of youths, etc.-simply do not apply. Drug selling was not a major issue in the subway; unemployment was increasing during the time in question; and there was no evidence of a decline in the youth population. The question is raised, "But isn't the subway a simpler system and easier to reclaim than city streets and public spaces?" This is the point of the subway story. It is a simpler system. People pay to enter it. There are few private spaces-only trains, platforms, passageways, and entrances and exits. One would expect that if police action, in this case to restore order, were to have an impact in any setting, it would be in such a re- stricted environment. From our standpoint it was an ideal place to test the broken windows hypothesis: that is, one way to reduce fear of crime and prevent serious crime is to restore order. The subway is a system in which the potentially confounding vari- ables cited by social scientists are controlled. Certainly, we cannot aver with scientific certainty that the crime reductions in the subway are the result of the police intervention. We put forward the following, however:

1. In response to a growing problem, the TPD developed a specific set of interventions that included police tactics 1224 KELLING & BRA TTON [Vol. 88

and changes in organizational structure and administrative processes; 2. The TPD "called its shots," predicting that order could be restored and that crime would be reduced;8 3. Immediately following the intervention, crime began a steep decline.

The "after, therefore because of" fallacy? Perhaps. We doubt it. No other explanation seems plausible. Did graffiti elimination play a role? Target hardening? Social services for the genuinely homeless? Other factors? Of course. But action by the TPD achieved a "tipping point." We will return to the idea of "tipping point." A final point in this introduction: no explanation of what happened in New York City can ignore the subway experience. not conceived of as such, it became the pretest While originally 14 to what happened in the city.

IV. LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT The New York City story is more complicated than the subway story. New York City is an intricate political, social, economic, and cultural entity in its own right. It has elaborate linkages to state, national, and international institutions and forces. Crime is more complicated in the city than in the subway. For example, the serious crime problem in the subway is largely robbery, with most of them being "grab and run"- crimes that, while not trivial, are less ominous than many of the confrontational robberies on city streets. Crime varies in other respects as well.

" The TPD's slogan under Bratton was "Disorder, farebeating, and robbery are one problem-deal with one and you deal with all." '4 Although, frankly, at least once over dinner, Bratton, Robert Wasserman, and Kelling played the mind game of how such tactics and policies could be implemented in New York City and, oh, if only they could. Moreover, Kelling had some hope that broken windows ideas might be incorporated into New York City. Prior to Mayor Giu- liani's 1993 campaign for mayor, Kelling had met with Giuliani and his staff on one occasion and with Giuliani alone on another to discuss the implications of broken windows for New York City. Likewise, Bratton met with him during this period to discuss the turnaround in the subway. 1998] INSIDERS' WEWS12 1225

Moreover, more complex control systems operate in the city-from the "small change" of neighborhood life,15 to schools, churches, family, workplace, business improvement districts, community groups, and others. Potentially confounding influ- ences are not naturally controlled. The NYPD is more complicated than the TPD was, and, frankly, it was in deep trouble when Bratton assumed control in 1994. Its troubles with abuse and corruption during the early 1990s were well known, largely as a result of newspaper revela- tions and the subsequent work of the Mollen Commission. 16 But there was another story in the NYPD, as least as dark as the abuse and corruption accounts, but far less well known-the 7 lack of quality policing. Since the 1970s Knapp Commission,1 the NYPD had been preoccupied with corruption. So much so that it was widely understood, but only partially true, that the "business" of the NYPD had become "staying out of trouble." And, of course, the most certain way to stay out of trouble was "to do nothing." Surely this is an overstatement, but nonetheless, it had considerable basis in fact. Most symptomatic of this "stay out of trouble by doing nothing" orientation was that line patrol officers were restrained by policy from making drug ar- rests, even if dealing was conducted right in front of their noses."' In respects it was the worst of all possible scenarios: too much abuse and corruption, too much corruption control, and not enough quality policing.19 Bratton described the NYPD administrative world in Turnaround:

1JANEJACOBS, TBE DEATH AND LIFE OF GREAT AMERICAN Crrtms 73 (1961). ,6 The Mollen Commission investigated corruption and abuse in the New York City Police Department during the early 1990's. '7 The Knapp Commission investigated corruption and abuse in the New York City Police Department during the early 1970's. "8Marcus Felson, Kelling's colleague at the Rutgers School of CriminalJustice, has suggested in a personal conversation that a major crime prevention mechanism would be to "get people to do theirjobs"-police, prosecutors, zoning officials, etc.- atone level, just what Bratton did with the NYPD. ,' See, e.g., FRANK ANECIIARICO & JAMES B. JACOBS, THE PuRsUrr OF ABSOLurE INTEGRry: How CORRUPTION CONTROL MAKES GovERNmNT INEFFECrIVE 157-70 (1996). 1226 KELLING & BRA TTON [Vol. 88

[T] he New York City Police department was dysfunctional. First, it was divided into little fiefdoms, and some bureau chiefs didn't even talk to each other. OCCP didn't talk to patrol, patrol didn't get along with the Detective Bureau, and nobody talked to internal af- fairs ...... Each bureau was like a silo: Information entered at the bottom and had to be delivered up the chain of command from one level to another until it reached the chief's office...

When Maple [a key Bratton advisor who had been a lieutenant in the TPD and who was a deputy commissioner under Bratton] analyzed the bureaus, the news got worse. How was the NYPD deployed? The Narcotics Bureau, he discovered, worked largely nine to five or five to one, Monday through Friday. The warrant squad was off weekends. Auto-crimes squad, off weekends. Robbery squads? Off weekends. The community-policing officers-those six thousand baby-faced twenty-two- year-olds who were going to solve all the neighborhoods' problems-off weekends. Essentially, except for the detectives, patrol officers, and some other operations going round the clock, the whole place took Sat- 2 urdays and Sundays off. 0

Leading and managing such troubled organizations had become Bratton's stock-in-trade. The NYPD had been the fifth police organization he had headed that was in organizational trouble. His conviction that leading, inspiring, and directing middle-management was the key to improving police organizations was evident in a paper he published with Kelling 1 and was apparent in his work with the TPDY. His closest organizational advisors, Robert Wasserman (a police leader and consultant for over 30 years) and RobertJohnson (President of First Security- a Boston-based private security firm) had struggled with management issues for decades. Wasserman, who had been an advisor to previous NYPD Commissioner Lee Brown, knew where the strengths of the NYPD were buried. Johnson had struggled to find leadership and management methods in the private sector to maintain core values and technologies in highly decen-

20BRATrON, supra note 12, at 208-09. 2, George L. Kelling & William J. Bratton, Implementing Community Policing The Ad- ministrative Problem, in PERSPECTIVES ON POLICING 4 (National Institute of Justice ed., 1993). 22 BRATrON, supra note 12, at 157-60. 19981 INSIDERS' VEWS 1227 tralized and geographically dispersed organizations. Other key advisors included John Linder, who had developed methods to do quick scans on organizational problems and opportunities, and Jack Maple, who is perhaps one of the savviest, street wise, and creative cops around. The ideas for Compstat-an organizational method both for holding precinct commanders accountable and for developing anti-crime tactics-grew directly out of the private sector management experiences of Johnson and the street sense of Maples. This, too has all been discussed previously.2 We summarize it here to make the following point: Bratton approached his commissionership in New York City with a clear plan. He had an idea about how to prevent crime; he had an organizational strategy he wanted to implement; and he had pre-tested both with great success in New York City's subways. Again as in the subway, he called his shots-both by demanding that mid-level managers be held accountable for crime reduction and by pro- ducing plans for dealing with specific problems such as guns, youth violence, domestic violence, quality of life, auto crimes, and others. One of the hallmarks in social science is that research should be guided by theory. Bratton's strategy was, in ef- fect, management guided by theory. Innovations were implemented and crime dropped. A lot.

V. CONCLUSION What happened in New York City? We, of course, will never know with scientific certainty. No credible alternatives, however, have been put forward to contradict our belief that police action played a pivotal role. In the final analysis, we believe that we have seen New York City do what cities and communities have traditionally done when confronted by disorder, crime, and mayhem: it has moved to reassert control over disorderly behavior, fear, and crime. The move to reassert control has been discernible in New York City since the late 1970s. Communities organized, business improvement districts organized, graffiti was eliminated from

Id at 233-39; KELLNG & COLES, supra note 8 at 146-49. 1228 KELLING & BRA YTON [Vol. 88 the subway, additional police were recruited and hired, prosecutors turned to communities for guidance (especially in Brook- lyn), order was restored in the subway, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was given a political mandate to restore order and help bring crime under control. But, there were limits to what could be accomplished without an active police presence. Things had been allowed to deteriorate for so long, aggressive youths had been so emboldened-indeed in the absence of an active police presence, they virtually dominated public spaces in many communities-that traditional control measures were simply not ro- bust enough to restrain their predatory behavior. And, in the midst of the "crack" epidemic, their violence spun out of control. Thus, the pattern described in Fagan et al's "Tale of Two ' ' 4 Trends 2 comes as no surprise to us. They compare non-gun homicides with gun homicides. That non-gun homicides should be declining over an extended period of time is consistent with our view of how New Yorkers have been reclaiming their city over the long haul. Fagan et al.'s assertion that "The rate of lethal violence broke important new ground only after 1995 or 1996" 25 is consistent with our interpretation as well. This was the exact period during which police were reinvigor- ated and their impact started to be felt. Likewise, we have no quarrel with Curtis' basic thesis,26 that poor people are capable of helping themselves. We have never asserted otherwise: it has been basic to Bratton's practice and it is explicit in both2 8 the original "Broken Windows, 27 and "Fixing Broken Windows., Our basic premise is this: the restoration of assertive policing in 1994 and 1995 interacted with community forces to achieve an unprecedented "tipping point" in violent and other forms of crime.2 Community forces, although formidable, could not do it alone. History and research gives us evidence

24 Fagan et al., supranote 1 at 12-13.

2' Id at 12. 26 Richard Curtis, The Improbable Transformation ofInner-City Neighborhoods. Crime, VIw- lence, Drugs and Youth in the 1990s, 88J. CRM. L. & CRIMINOLOGY 1233, 1263 (1998). 2 7 Wilson & Kelling, supra note 5. 21KELLING & COLES, supra note 8. 2Malcolm Gladwell, The TippingPoint, NEWYORKER, June 3, 1996, at 32. 1998] 1NSDERS' V1EWS 1229 that police cannot do it alone.30 To assert that both the community and police played significant roles demeans neither. Can we ever be more specific in attributing causality? We doubt it. The interesting question is, however, why things got so out of control. What happened that communities throughout the country either lacked the will or capacity to maintain order and keep its miscreants under control during the past three decades? Certainly macro economic and demographic forces were at play. More specifically the forces that have been aligned against neighborhoods and communities over the last three decades have been staggering. As Kelling wrote elsewhere:

Aside from the seemingly inevitable growth of the suburbs, consider what was done to our cities during the 1950s, 1960s, and 19770s. In the name of urban renewal, entire inner-city neighborhoods were torn apart. No provisions were made for displaced residents, so naturally they moved into adjacent neighborhoods. Because many of those displaced were African Americans, real estate blockbusters followed them, under- cutting property values and scaring other residents into moving. In the renewal areas, concrete blocks of multistory public housing was built, often, as in Chicago with external unsecured elevators. This was the housing of the last resort for the most troubled and troublesome families. Expanded tenant "rights," however, made it virtually impossible to evict troublemakers regardless of their behavior or capacity for mayhem. Ex- pressway construction followed and cut wide swaths through communities, displacing entire neighborhoods and dividing others. Neighborhood schools were abandoned and students were bussed throughout the city. Mental hospitals emptied patients onto city streets and drunkenness was decriminalized. The mentally ill and alcohol and drug abusers drifted into urban centers. In the name of their "liberty interests" and to forestall family and governmental abuse, parental and governmental authority over youths was reduced. To ensure that we children would not be stigmatized, we abandoned the idea of early iden- tification of predelinquents.

Intermingling with these urban policies, were equally disas- trous police and criminal justice policies that grew out of the

"' For a summary of this history and research, see KELLING & COLES, supra note 8, at 70-107. George L. Kelling, National Institute ofJustice, C?ime Control, The Police, and Cul- ture Wars: Broken Windows and Cultural Pluralism, in II PERSPECrIVES ON CRIME & JUSTICE: 1997-1998 LECrURE SERIES 1, 13-14 (1998). 1230 KELLING & BRA TTON [Vol. 88

1960's Presidential Commission on Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice. Its position was explicit: poverty, racism, and economic injustices caused crime. To prevent crime one had to eliminate these "root causes." The business of the police and other criminal justice agencies became arresting and processing offenders. This view became so pervasive that many early defenders of community policing asserted that because police could not deal with poverty, racism, etc., they could do little about crime. Thus the crime problem was "de-policed" for many police leaders-a view that most line officers found abso- lutely unacceptable, complicating the implementation of community policing. Police tactics grew out of these assumptions and police became "law enforcement officers" responding to serious crimes and calls for service-their isolation in cars virtually "de-policing" city streets. The political far right came in with their variation: crime was caused by breakdown of family values associated with welfare. Consequently, crime prevention was held hostage by both the ideologies of the far left and right: economic redistribution or elimination of welfare. Aside from community policing, criminal justice innovations were limited to more certain and longer incarceration. Happily, police, criminal justice practitioners, and urban officials are breaking new ground. Most criminal justice profes- sionals have no quarrel with the idea that disorder and crime are somehow linked to poverty, racism, and breakdown of values. But, they also understand that these linkages interact in an extraordinarily complex way. Meantime, they have rediscovered policing, as opposed to law enforcement, and prevention, as opposed to case processing. The changes that are taking place in the basic modalities of many public housing agencies, schools, zoning agencies, city attorneys' offices, and other agencies are equally as impressive. The interesting thing, as both of us travel around the country, is that different cities are doing it in different ways. The starting points are different. Powerful collaborations are forming among citizen groups, business, city agencies, prosecutors, correctional officials, and others. They take different configurations in different cities and deal with different problems in different ways. But this, of course, is the 1998] 9]NS!DERS' VIEWS 1231

lesson. Each city is singular. Within cities, communities are unique. They are asserting control over themselves in unique ways as well. In sum, neither of us would back away from a concluding statement in Bratton's Turnaround:

In terms of importance and potential and commitment, police in America are probably the most misunderstood entity in public life today. Old images exist, and, in truth, old-guard departments exist as well. But, as we approach the rnillenium, there is a new breed of police leader and a new breed of police officer. We need more of them. I was privileged during my last half-dozen years in policing to work on the national and international stage, and I feel there is still more the police can do. The turnaround of the NYPD was the catalyst for the turnaround of New York City itself and offers a potential blueprint for the turnaround of the crime situation in the entire country. We clearly showed that when properly led, properly managed, and in effective part- nership with the neighborhoods and the political leaders, police can ef- fect great change. We have clearly shown that police can take back streets that were given up as lost for decades. The continuing challenge for American police leaders is to take them back in a lawful and respect- ful manner so that the behavior of the police reflects the civil behavior 3 2 society expects of its citzens.s e .

" BRATTON, supranote 12 at 310-11. 1232 KELLNG & BRATTON [Vol. 88